


The Future

by knaveofmogadore



Category: Original Work, The Lorien Legacies - Pittacus Lore
Genre: Gen, mogadorian oc, something soft and kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 11:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13294125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knaveofmogadore/pseuds/knaveofmogadore
Summary: Imagine a very young human garde going up to a younger Mogadorian, twenty or so years after the books, and asking them what all of their tattoos mean.





	The Future

**Author's Note:**

> This is all very self indulgent, Micah is an oc I had from an earlier work that has never been published, that I wanted to eventually use. Tanisha I made up for this, but she's based off of a little kid I used to tutor in high school.

Micah shifts on the metal bench for the third time in five minutes. He stretches his legs out on the iron, painted in peeling green paint worn away from years of equally impatient asses sitting on it. He crosses his ankles and pulls up Snapchat to prove to his boss that, yes, he was still sitting at the same bus stop as ten minutes ago. Sadly, there was still no setting on his phone that can fix the lighting issues caused by coal black eyes and alien-shaded white skin. His coarse black hair curls into his Mogadorian tattoos in a way he wished it did when it was dry. The tattoos twist down his temple and his neck in distinct but interconnected designs. He put a filter on it and tried to go back to what he had been doing.

He felt a gentle tapping on his legs. Thinking it was a bird Micah looked down, irritated, and saw instead a small girl. She looked young, maybe eight or nine. She could not have been taller than Micah’s hips, with dark brown skin and her coiled hair pulled into puffed pigtails on either side of her head. She was wearing a ink sweater and tutu, with white leggings, all dusted with the light drizzle coming down outside the bus tent. She looked fairly irritated herself, and pointed insistently at his feet.

“Can you please make some room?”

Micah smiled sheepishly and moved his legs. “Sorry, of course.”

She pulled herself onto the bench and sat, crossing her legs like a little girl from an old church photo as her pink skirt fluffed up and settled. She pretends to stare ahead and wait for the bus, but he could see her sneaking peeks at his face. He pretends to ignore her, since kids had not bothered him since he /was/ her age.

Instead of ‘you’re a monster,’ he gets an extended hand and a “Hi, I’m Tanisha!”

Micah blinks at her and shakes her hand out of habit. Tanisha’s hand is comically small in his, barely the size of his palm and easily breakable. He lets go first and stuffs his hands on his pockets, leaving her free to point at his face.

“What does that one mean?”

Micah raises his eyebrows. His professional ‘be sweet to the kids’ smile quirks as he holds the surprised laughter in. Ten years working with kids and none of them had asked that yet.

Micah fires back with a different question, “Where are your parents?”

Tanisha puffs up, like she was making herself look bigger than she was, and smiles proudly. She points to an apartment that is, at most, ten feet away, on the first floor with all of the windows facing outward open. A woman is standing just out of sight and obviously watching them out of the blinds. Once Micah squints, he can recognize her as Mrs. Johnson, otherwise known as banana-bread-for-all-occasions. He waves cheerily at her. Tanisha waves at him to get his attention back.

“I’m a big kid! I can go to the bus stop and wait for the school bus all by myself!”

Micah pretends to be excited. He projects a higher pitched chipper into his voice and smiles sweetly. “Really? That sounds exciting! What else can you do?”

Tanisha relaxes, leans forward even, like she is a therapist and Micah pays her by the hour for each session. “My dad says that changing the subject when someone asks you a question is bad.”

Micah’s smile suddenly feels much closer to plastic than real. The effort of forcing it causes a twitch to develop in the corner of his mouth. He drops it, his face smoothing to the familiar neutral expression of a mogadorian.

“He’s completely right,” Micah sighs.

Tanisha smiles brightly, clearly delighted in winning an argument. Micah got the feeling that she won a lot of arguments at home.

“So what’s the flower one mean?”

She pointed to a small but distinct tattoo on his temple. It begins with a five petal shape, the inside of the flower a spiral. The petals never completely connected to any part of the shape, leaving the whole thing looking unfinished if someone stares. Micah touches the tips of his fingers to it out of reflex.

“I was hit by a car when I was still in school.”

Tanisha’s lips pursed and her eyebrows drew together. He head tilts to the side like she was not sure she heard correctly. “You got a tattoo for getting hit by a car,” she balked.

Micah could not help from laughing quietly. “I got it because I lived.”

“I just wouldn’t have got hit with a car,” she declares, with all the confidence in the world.

Micah’s smile returns. He adores kids. Working with them is similar to being surrounded by little warriors and scientists and teachers at all times. Everything is scary and nothing can touch them.

“What about that one?”

The downside, Micah remembers, is that children are relentless. She is pointing at her own face, at the place where there are three twisting lines down his own cheek. He points to each one as he explains, “I graduated high school I graduated college, I got my first job.”

“What about the hand,” she asks, curling her small fingers like they were claws. Micah taps the palm of it, under his chin.

“I married the boy of my dreams,” Micah says wistfully. His eyes close for a moment as he thinks about the dinner date he planned for them this morning, how happy he had been at breakfast. He blinks his eyes open when Tanisha giggles and blushes a brighter red when he realizes the red tint had risen on his cheeks.

“It’s ok,” she says. She looks around suspiciously for eavesdroppers, then leans in closer. “Can I tell you a secret,” she whispers.

Micah nods, his eyes exaggeratedly wide. Tanisha cups her hand around her mouth and whispers, “I like a boy too.”

“Really,” he quietly exclaims. She motions for him to be quieter.

“Yes!” She points at an almost vacant spot just above Micah’s marriage mark. “His dad has a tattoo just like that one, but his dot is bigger! Why is yours so small?”

Micah shrugged good naturedly. “He’s been married much longer than I have, I guess.”

Tanisha nods in understanding, “That makes sense. He’s bigger than you.”

She points at one on the opposite side of his face before he can respond. It is one that branches out from under his ear. A short trunk spreads to a small amount of curled and gnarled branches, twisted into the vague shapes of letters, with more than enough room for future growth. Micah’s was a large bush compared to his father’s canopy, but it was considerable for his age. He raises his eyebrow at Tanisha, amused.

“Didn’t anybody teach you not to point?”

“How else am I supposed to get your attention,” she points out, “I’m short!”

“That’s logical,” Micah says. He turns his face to show the bush more clearly, even tilts his chin so that she did not have to look up as far. He points to each branch with his pinky as he names its purpose. He works his way out from the base to the tips of each branch. “It shows all the important skills I’ve learned so far. This one is learning to read and write, this is my first time babysitting, this one is learning to ride a bike, this is playing piano,” they spend the rest of their time this way. Tanisha listens to Micah name the reasons for every branch. She asks questions and prods him for stories while they both wait for their late busses.

Micah was out to the tips when both busses pulled up, one after the other. Tanisha waves to him and her mom and runs onto the bus, weirdly excited to get to school. Micah texts his boss for the third time in the last thirty minutes as he takes his seat and prepares himself for a full day of even more nosy children.


End file.
